Intergalactic Summit

Blue ribbon commissions are designed to distract. They are designed to placate. Sometimes, they don’t even come up with solutions. The Senate announces a blue ribbon commission to study the issue, and there is great fanfare. Now that they’ve done something, the press looks away to other things for their news cycle and the issue is forgotten. Years later, the report is given to the Senate with no fanfare, no press, and it is filed away and forgotten. More cynical every day, I tell you.

At least blue ribbon commissions know what they are talking about. The resolution is so easily ignored because it’s so vague.

Delta and Gamma cities are disadvantaged compared to Alpha cities? Hold the presses. This is front page news! /s We know all this. Everyone knows this. Sure, they’re disadvantaged, but everyone knows that they’re not exactly living in filth with no health care.

Do we have a constitutional right to adequate health care? Of course, but the constitution is a little vague on what adequate is. This is for a reason: technology progresses. What is an adequate standard of care is always moving forward. The treatment of cancer in the past might have been chemotherapy. For those of you that don’t know what that is, chemotherapy is literally poison. The hope is that it poisoned the cancer more. More recently, we could target cancer cells with special nanites to remove them. Now we can use the nanites to remove the affected cells and gene therapy to ensure that no more cancers develop. This sort of progress is replicated across all areas of medicine: techniques improve, equipment improves, certification requirements improve.

Anecdotal evidence actually works pretty well in this case.
A patient named Eves (not his real name) was living on the barren planet X. Eves worked as a miner for company Y on a rare earth metals mine. One day there was an accident which resulted in Eves being severely burned with third degree burns on his left side, including his face. The hospital in the city that Eves lived in did not have up to date medical equipment, specifically a cellular regen machine. As a result, surgeons were required to surgically reconstruct Eves’ face as best they could. As a result, Eves lost the use of his left eye and is permanently disfigured. Eves’ wife left him soon after.

Eves filed suit against company Y saying that his health care was not adequate. Company Y said they fully paid for Eves’ health care to the fullest extent it was available on planet X. The court agreed and further agreed that mandating the transport of patients off planet for nonlifesaving treatment was beyond the scope of the law. Eves was given a medical retirement from company Y because he was unable to see out of one eye. His compensation was less than half of his working salary.

Now we have an actual face to put to our health care crisis! This is a face that we can put on the news feeds. This is a face we can trot out. This is a face that we can heal with modern advanced techniques. (You should do this. Pretty quickly after starting the lobbying campaign, too.) Give him to a competent doctor and have him fully healed. Then parade his before and after pictures around. See what modern medicine can do! If only he’d had cellular regen earlier. His past years might not have been misery. His wife might not have left him. This goes on. Eves now becomes your spokesman.

Okay, back to the resolution. It asked for an inventory from the hospitals! !!! How can you know that they are at a disadvantage if you don’t know what they have? This should have been first in your fact finding. Step one: ensure there is a problem. Is there a problem? Yup. Could I tell you how much of one? Nope. And I know more about health care than the Villore Assembly people do. But, calling for an inventory? Sure, the Senate will do that. They’ll have answers for you in several years about the results of the inventory. Congratulations, you’ve let the Senate appear to be doing something without actually doing something.

Then the resolution asks for a specific bit of medical supplies. Then they explain it was deliberately decided to be low tech. Never do this. Always shoot for the moon. Go for the best. The best of everything. You’re not going to get all you ask, so start your negotiation in the best possible position. This is politics. POLITICS! If the senators were kind and caring people willing to do the right thing just for the sake of it being the right thing, they would not be senators.

Remember, democracy is the worst form of government ever devised, excepting all the others that have been tried.

(I'd rather this thread be to discuss the nature of Gallente politics and the (dys)functioning of our democratic system. Those wishing to actually discuss the health care resolution should go to that thread. It was only here as illustration.)

What have you done to help? All I've seen you do is make lewd remarks to other capsuleers on routers. At least the VA is doing something.

She's using the IGS as a medium to better inform the vast majority of us as to how things work in the Gallente Federation. I personally found this post fascinating.

Alright, I'll bite. Where do you practition, if anywhere specific? And what is your specialty?

I have my own Iteron V with a full medical suite. Most of the time I am in the Luminaire system, as I live in Caille. However, I also work with my family's charity, The l'Agusta Charitable Foundation, to treat persons in need. Many times this is an individual that did not have access to adequate health care for a significant portion of their life and need some extensive work done. Eves (not his real name!) is a real person. Other times we help freed slaves and refugees from various places. It's strange, but slave owners don't really throw out for their slave's health care. This work happens in more than a few systems on the fringes of the Federation and sometimes in Minmatar space.

My specialty is actually genetics: gene therapy and the like. Though, I am also a qualified surgeon. I made my initial fortune doing body modifications for the rich and famous in Caille before I became a capsuleer.

I don't try to save the cluster. I only worry about one patient at a time.
I'm not going to get involved in the sort of thing the VA is doing, either. It's not what I want to do. Someone else can lobby and work for public policy. But, if they are going to do it, they should at least do it effectively.

The real secret here is that the high quality of life in Alpha and Beta cities could not exist without Delta and Gamma cities to exploit for cheap labour and material goods.

Want to improve the lot for the less privileged in the Federation? That will mean those at the top will need to make sacrifices. Not likely.

The fact is, the existence of such a wide disparity between classes is not an anomoly, it's a sign that the system is working as intended.

Despite what might be inferred from the stock footage of slaves used in Gallentean press, this is atypical. Slaves far more often than not receive perfectly acceptable levels of preventive treatment and medical care. The motive behind why Holders are disposed towards providing adequate healthcare is hopefully one created from a mix of religious and ethical concern but, should that fail, they will do it for the simple, practical, reason which is that slaves are damned expensive.

Slaves are large capital investments which will make no returns sick or dead. The master that corrects a lazy slave with the whip is also going to be sure the same slave gets a vaccine for whatever local viral infection might be even a remote concern. Because you know what sort of slave accomplishes less labor than a lazy one? One that spends two weeks paralyzed with a delirium inducing fever, relieving himself of his bodily contents through, as they say, both ends and then dies. That slave gets very little done.

A slave breaks his arm, you mend it. One becomes pregnant, you provide prenatal care. They all get their vaccines, checkups, clean water, a nutritous diet, and whatever else is necessary to keep them healthy and fit because even if you care nothing about them as a human being you still need them in working order. Same as a tractor or a drone.

This misconception irritates me because it paints Holders with two broad brushes, one brush saying we are inhuman monsters, which is not nice, and one that says we have no idea how to manage a business, which pisses me off.

Are there exceptions? Yes. A relatively small, but very well publicized, number of Holders meet and exceed every stereotype of the sadistic "slaver scum". Sad, but in the increasingly efficient conditions of the market (and no prospect of an influx of new slaves into the population) their misuse is more and more leading to their downfall. Which is nice. Because a piece of human filth goes bankrupt and I get to buy his assets at auction where he has gone from flogging poor miserable souls to flogging whatever he has left on the cheap to try and save himself from total ruin.

In short, slaves get medicine because the average Holder is not an idiot desperately trying to destroy the source of his income.

And yet the slavers still raid Republic worlds and outposts, flying golden ships. Heck, just last week, Mokk was trying to sell slaves in-channel, looking to Nauplius as a prospective buyer.

Don't believe the hype, Lord Tash-Murkon. The flow of new slaves continues, it just lies about existing.

Mr. Tash-Murkon, this might surprise you, but the Amarr is not the only group in the cluster that have slaves. I actually spend a lot of time dealing with slaves that were held captive by the Serpentis or Angels.

Here's a ******* horrible statistic: a sex slave has a life expectancy of about twenty-five years. How much health care do you think they actually get?